Noam Chomsky - Challenges and Choices

According to Professor Chomsky, we live in a unique historical moment, confronted by an array of severe challenges, some so severe that “failure to address them soon will effectively terminate organised human society, with mass destruction of other species as well”. The two most prominent are climate change and nuclear war. Moreover, the current pandemic has killed more Americans than the flu pandemic of a century ago and has not yet run its course. It is also well understood that failure to vaccinate globally is not only a moral scandal but also facilitates mutations that may escape control. Other crises also loom such as the emergence of new pandemics, antibiotic-resistant bacteria, and land degradation.

In his address to the IIEA, Professor Chomsky argues that despite the severe crises that humans face at this historically unprecedented moment, feasible solutions are at hand.  He considers whether humans have the moral and intellectual capacity to choose a course towards a much better world and how we might provide the answers.

About the Speaker:
Noam Chomsky was born on 7 December 1928, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He received his PhD in Linguistics in 1955 from the University of Pennsylvania. During the years 1951 to 1955, Chomsky was a Junior Fellow of the Harvard University Society of Fellows. The major theoretical viewpoints of his doctoral dissertation appeared in the monograph Syntactic Structure, in 1957. This formed part of a more extensive work, The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory, circulated in mimeograph in 1955 and published in part in 1975.

Professor Chomsky joined the staff of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1955 and in 1961 was appointed full professor. In 1976 he was appointed Institute Professor in the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy. In 2017, Professor Chomsky was appointed Laureate Professor at the University of Arizona.

Professor Chomsky has lectured at many universities in the US and abroad and is the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and awards. He has written and lectured widely on linguistics, philosophy, intellectual history, contemporary issues, international affairs, and U.S. foreign policy.

Recorded on the 6th of October 2021